Thursday, October 21, 2004
I am having difficulties with my alarm clock. It is on my desk and I have to physically get out of my bed to shut it off. Sounds like a good idea but my overwhelming desire to go back to bed has adapted to the situation and if you will, evolve!! :-o Now I unconciously rise and shut the alarm off and go back to bed without even really knowing that I am doing it! Oye. So I was a little late with getting out the door, even though I was planning to arrive to my Ceramic Petrology lab late. Our prof had in fact emailed us the day before admitting that he would be late. Knowing him, I decided that instead of 9am, I would go for 9:30am. I walked Neron up 2 blocks to get to his doggy daycare and managed to get him into his kennel without breaking out into a sweat and exhaustion. (I was taking him before-hours, so I have to go through the back and kennel him until the staff gets there so they can come out to play). I managed this by tricking him with some banana, which I threw into the kennel. They fall for it eeeeverytime.
I got on the streetcar and got to school by 9am and had a very quick breakfast of cereal and tea and fruit before I went to the lab. I was mulling over my poor performance on my Middle Egyptian test the day before. Honestly. I knew my stuff and was ready, and when I wrote the test, I just went blank. The transliterations of the genetive and the general plural forms were screwing me up so badly. I had gone over them so many times, too. I am just a poor test performer in general. It is frustrating.
The lab was long and tiring, but never-especially our prof-without alacrity. I love how especially how he leaves in the middle of our lab to get coffee. haha. I was putting a lot of concentration into trying to decipher what was in my thin section this time. I really am lost with what the hell I'm looking at in the microscope. It was from a piece of pottery with volcanic ash glass as its temper..interesting... I also had to work on the lab from last week because I was sick. It had some chert in it and a lot of calcite and a bit of quartz.
After my mind being numbed by that, I had exactly 10 minutes to run to my dining hall to eat lunch-a quick sandwich and apple, and meet my friend in the class so we could speed walk to the ROM for our Petrology class. Everyone had to walk from the lab over there but dammit, I needed some lunch. 9-1pm of ceramic petrology is too much for anyone. We were 15 minutes late...oops..
We gathered around a high res viewer so our prof could show us thin section slides of various ...things...honestly I don't know what the theme was but he sure showed us a lot of basalt and phosphate.
I was so glad to leave that one, and I made my way to Robarts in the company of some friends from class. I messed around on the internet in Robarts on my ibook-downloading the readings for my near Eastern prehistory archaeology class-that was only about 30 mins. I went to fill my travel mug with tea at my dining hall just before class, which was at 2pm. I decided to type my notes on my ibook to see if that was any better and boy, it sure was. My notes were detailed and organized-and I could do it rather quickly. From now on, notes will be typed! I just can't write as quickly, and I seem to be able to focus on what he is saying more and type at the same time, then writing and listening.
I went downstairs in SidSmith with another friend in that class because we planned to stay for a grad school application meeting, something being offered by the Anthro student union. I hoped it would be at 4pm so I could stay for it, but it was at 4:30 and I usually go for dinner and meet Rob at 4:45pm...so I stayed with my friend and we studied for our Prehistory archaeology midterm (next week) together, which I found really helpful and we got through quite a bit. I found out that the info lecture was only for applying to U of T (blah) and so I just stayed and chatted with people and ate an oatmeal cookie until it was about to begin, and then I zipped off to dinner. Meat lasagna Mmm and milk and vegetables and the day was over. I went home with Rob and we picked up Neron on the way home. I practiced some highland dancing--omg the forms are so difficult. I drilled myself in some movements from the fling for 20 minutes with only a minuscule bit of improvement. ugh. Mastering these dances is going to be a lot of work. My pas de bas for the sword are still pathetic. But it made me sweat anyway...I worked out for 15 more minutes on our fold-out cross trainer and had a shower and settled into some homework. I plunged into some Hebrew and got a couple verses done in 30 minutes, sweet, a new record. I didn't even have to use my big ass dictionary either--just my parsing guide for a few verb forms I was confused about and my little textbook for a few words I was unsure about. I am starting to possess the ability to read biblical hebrew fluently. It feels good.
I studied a section of advanced english vocabulary over again and now I am fairly confident with my new array of words. I'm not simply engaging myself in studies to become a mere pedantic pundit, but so that I may better describe the world around me and employ such knowledge in a more expedient fashion.
:p
I had some Irish tea and some meusli mini pitas and I am spending an awful lot of time on my blog right now. I mean to be doing research into journals for my prehistory research paper, which I am writing on the topic of lithic analysis. I would also like to spend 20 minutes or so studying some gaelic grammar.
In other news, people have approached me in my classes about starting up an undergrad volleyball team for intramurals for the NMCUSA, being that the grad students have one. I told them that I would thus start one up, then! It is easy. I printed off the form and I will advertise for it starting tomorrow in the lounge. We will come up with a name and I will hand in the form to the AC and we will begin in the winter term. done and done. Leadership skills abound.
Work yesterday was interesting. Apparently I uncovered in this huge stack of old ledger notes, that nobody knew what were, 4 seperate field registry for sites not that of Tayinat. They were Judaidah and Chatal Huyuk! Dr. H was suprised. But I felt proud that I had untaggled that god-forbidden mess of papers. What a task. phew.
anyway, off I go.
Laura
I got on the streetcar and got to school by 9am and had a very quick breakfast of cereal and tea and fruit before I went to the lab. I was mulling over my poor performance on my Middle Egyptian test the day before. Honestly. I knew my stuff and was ready, and when I wrote the test, I just went blank. The transliterations of the genetive and the general plural forms were screwing me up so badly. I had gone over them so many times, too. I am just a poor test performer in general. It is frustrating.
The lab was long and tiring, but never-especially our prof-without alacrity. I love how especially how he leaves in the middle of our lab to get coffee. haha. I was putting a lot of concentration into trying to decipher what was in my thin section this time. I really am lost with what the hell I'm looking at in the microscope. It was from a piece of pottery with volcanic ash glass as its temper..interesting... I also had to work on the lab from last week because I was sick. It had some chert in it and a lot of calcite and a bit of quartz.
After my mind being numbed by that, I had exactly 10 minutes to run to my dining hall to eat lunch-a quick sandwich and apple, and meet my friend in the class so we could speed walk to the ROM for our Petrology class. Everyone had to walk from the lab over there but dammit, I needed some lunch. 9-1pm of ceramic petrology is too much for anyone. We were 15 minutes late...oops..
We gathered around a high res viewer so our prof could show us thin section slides of various ...things...honestly I don't know what the theme was but he sure showed us a lot of basalt and phosphate.
I was so glad to leave that one, and I made my way to Robarts in the company of some friends from class. I messed around on the internet in Robarts on my ibook-downloading the readings for my near Eastern prehistory archaeology class-that was only about 30 mins. I went to fill my travel mug with tea at my dining hall just before class, which was at 2pm. I decided to type my notes on my ibook to see if that was any better and boy, it sure was. My notes were detailed and organized-and I could do it rather quickly. From now on, notes will be typed! I just can't write as quickly, and I seem to be able to focus on what he is saying more and type at the same time, then writing and listening.
I went downstairs in SidSmith with another friend in that class because we planned to stay for a grad school application meeting, something being offered by the Anthro student union. I hoped it would be at 4pm so I could stay for it, but it was at 4:30 and I usually go for dinner and meet Rob at 4:45pm...so I stayed with my friend and we studied for our Prehistory archaeology midterm (next week) together, which I found really helpful and we got through quite a bit. I found out that the info lecture was only for applying to U of T (blah) and so I just stayed and chatted with people and ate an oatmeal cookie until it was about to begin, and then I zipped off to dinner. Meat lasagna Mmm and milk and vegetables and the day was over. I went home with Rob and we picked up Neron on the way home. I practiced some highland dancing--omg the forms are so difficult. I drilled myself in some movements from the fling for 20 minutes with only a minuscule bit of improvement. ugh. Mastering these dances is going to be a lot of work. My pas de bas for the sword are still pathetic. But it made me sweat anyway...I worked out for 15 more minutes on our fold-out cross trainer and had a shower and settled into some homework. I plunged into some Hebrew and got a couple verses done in 30 minutes, sweet, a new record. I didn't even have to use my big ass dictionary either--just my parsing guide for a few verb forms I was confused about and my little textbook for a few words I was unsure about. I am starting to possess the ability to read biblical hebrew fluently. It feels good.
I studied a section of advanced english vocabulary over again and now I am fairly confident with my new array of words. I'm not simply engaging myself in studies to become a mere pedantic pundit, but so that I may better describe the world around me and employ such knowledge in a more expedient fashion.
:p
I had some Irish tea and some meusli mini pitas and I am spending an awful lot of time on my blog right now. I mean to be doing research into journals for my prehistory research paper, which I am writing on the topic of lithic analysis. I would also like to spend 20 minutes or so studying some gaelic grammar.
In other news, people have approached me in my classes about starting up an undergrad volleyball team for intramurals for the NMCUSA, being that the grad students have one. I told them that I would thus start one up, then! It is easy. I printed off the form and I will advertise for it starting tomorrow in the lounge. We will come up with a name and I will hand in the form to the AC and we will begin in the winter term. done and done. Leadership skills abound.
Work yesterday was interesting. Apparently I uncovered in this huge stack of old ledger notes, that nobody knew what were, 4 seperate field registry for sites not that of Tayinat. They were Judaidah and Chatal Huyuk! Dr. H was suprised. But I felt proud that I had untaggled that god-forbidden mess of papers. What a task. phew.
anyway, off I go.
Laura
